Moodboard

A moodboard is one to three pages holding frames from other films, photos of light, a colour palette, typography and sometimes a music reference. The director or art director puts it together during pre production, usually in half a day. It is not a design of the video, it is an agreement about mood and look.

Before a trade fair we were planning a loop for a booth. The client said clean and modern; we heard a white studio, he meant a dark hall with neon. The moodboard exposed that in ten minutes. Had it surfaced at the rough cut, it would have meant another shooting day and a missed deadline.

It grows out of the creative brief and the references you send. We want three videos you like, and above all one sentence for each saying what exactly you like about it. Then we add what we will not be doing. Approving the moodboard is the last cheap checkpoint before the storyboard and the shoot.

A moodboard is also a trap. Fill it with five global brand spots and you create an expectation the budget cannot carry, leaving the client disappointed by an otherwise good video. So every reference needs a note on what we can realistically transfer from it. Without that, a moodboard is a sales tool, not a working one.

Ours always has two halves: like this, and not like this. The second half matters more, and it is where clients laugh most and agree fastest. Try it today: next to your three favourite references, add one you dislike and write down why.